Learning to Stop Weaponizing Food Against Myself Blog Post #6

Not weaponizing food against myself is still a learning curve - I'm practicing every day.

For a long time, food wasn’t just food. It was a consequence. A punishment. A reward. A way to prove something to myself when I felt like I wasn’t enough — or a way to celebrate, cope, or feel anything other than what I was actually feeling. Anything but nourishment, that was the last thing on the list.

When I didn’t feel good enough, I didn’t feel like I deserved to eat. So I wouldn’t. I’d deprive myself, throw my body into chaos, and end up inflamed, exhausted, and run down. And somewhere in the back of my mind, that felt like discipline.

If my body could talk it would ask: are we eating today? And if we are — is it going to help us? Or are we in survival mode again?

My body responded the only way it knew how. Storing. Protecting. Bracing for scarcity. Running on stress hormones because that was all it had.

What I didn’t understand then — what nobody told me — is that running on stress hormones wasn’t just making me tired. It was actively flaring my Hashimoto’s.

The science I wish someone had explained sooner:

Cortisol — the primary stress hormone — suppresses TSH signaling and impairs the conversion of T4 to T3, the active thyroid hormone your cells actually use.¹ Chronically elevated cortisol also increases intestinal permeability — one of the primary mechanisms that triggers autoimmune flares in Hashimoto’s patients.²³

Every time I withheld food and ran my body on empty, I was pouring fuel on a fire I didn’t even know was burning while not understanding why the fire wasn't going out.

The fatigue. The inflammation. The feeling of being perpetually run down. I thought my body was broken. I didn’t realize I was the one making it worse — not out of carelessness, but out of a story I’d been handed about what I deserved.

Breaking that cycle isn’t a one-time decision. It’s a constant continual choice.

My turning point was asking for help.

When I asked my husband — really asked — that was the first crack in the pattern. He didn't try to fix anything, he just listened. That space created room for something new: fueling my body even when my emotions aren’t regulated. Even when stress is loud and life is moving fast and some part of me is convinced I’m failing. Those are the exact moments I’ve historically wanted to withhold nourishment. Those are also — I know now — the exact moments when withholding does the most damage to a Hashimoto’s body. The moments I most need to eat are the moments the old pattern screams the loudest not to.

When you’ve been food-shamed or body-shamed, deprivation starts to feel like control. Like being good. Like you’ve earned your place at the table — literally. I know how that sounds. But that was my story for a long time. And rewriting it is hard, because it isn’t just about what’s on the plate. It’s about what you believe you deserve.

Our house is always a little chaotic. Lately it’s been more than a little.

Emotions are high. Dysregulation is real. When you’re already stretched thin, chaos doesn’t knock — it just arrives. Life is busy and tender all at once.

In the middle of one of those moments — high tension, frustration sitting heavy in the room — my husband will make me food. Real food, made with intention. As I sit in front of it, I have to fight my inner dialogue to get it into my body.

Not because it wasn’t good, because the old voice was right there:

“I don’t deserve this.”

“I didn’t do enough today.”

“I’m not good enough for nourishment right now.”

Eating is never one decision. It is a hundred small ones, minute by minute, because I’m genuinely rewiring something that runs deep and it's not always graceful.

But I did it, and on this day I ended my day with a 9 out of 10 on my hash scorecard.

That’s a big deal to me. Not because the number is the point — but because I chose nourishment when the old pattern had a very convincing argument for why I shouldn’t.

I understand now what’s actually at stake when I don’t. Every skipped meal, every stress-fueled empty stretch — my thyroid was paying for it in ways I couldn’t see at the time.

Hash Eating Project is healing my body. That part is real.

It’s also giving me something that feels bigger than that: power; not the kind that comes from restriction or control. The kind that comes from not being ruled by shame anymore.

Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know then: the shame wasn’t just hurting my heart. It was hurting my thyroid. They were never separate problems.

Healing isn’t built on perfect days. It’s built on what you do on the hard ones.

One day at a time. One small shift at a time.

I'm so glad you're here.

Elena

Want the tools that help me stay grounded on the hard days? Head to the website — that’s where you’ll find the free Hash Eating Scorecard, the eBook, and the newsletter.

SOURCES

1.  Tsatsoulis A. “The role of stress in the clinical expression of thyroid autoimmunity.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 2006;1088:382–395.

2.  Fasano A. “Leaky gut and autoimmune diseases.” Clinical Reviews in Allergy & Immunology. 2012;42(1):71–78.

3.  Söderholm JD, Perdue MH. “Stress and gastrointestinal tract. II. Stress and intestinal barrier function.” American Journal of Physiology — Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology. 2001;280(1):G7–G13.

This post is educational and based on peer-reviewed research. It is not a substitute for medical advice. Always work with your healthcare provider on treatment and medication decisions.